Granny’s Dough Bowl – Heart warming story

When Leland Barton and Mamie Cork were married in the little Wesley Chapel Church in 1897, the father of the groom presented the bride with a hand carved dough bowl he had shaped from a huge cedar tree in his front yard.

Scraps from the dough would be cycled back into a smaller batch

For 65 years Mamie took the dough bowl out of the flour box in the pantry, put in two handfuls of self-rising flour, a fistful of lard, and mixed until the fat was in particles smaller than peas, added buttermilk and worked it into a moist dough. It was transferred to a cheese cloth covered with flour on the metal-topped box and rolled out for cutting biscuits. Scraps from the dough would be cycled back into a smaller batch and cut again.

Biscuits were placed in the oven next to the roaring firebox. A woman was judged by her biscuits, hot and fluffy, flat and chewy, or hard as rocks. Some were almost as big as saucers, others slightly larger than a silver dollar. They would be served with sausages from the hogs killed in freezing weather, then processed by smoking in the smokehouse. Fresh eggs were abundant and grits completed the meal with homemade jelly and molasses to add sweetness and energy for a long farm workday.

The dough bowl was each woman’s equipment for crafting biscuits, yeast rolls, or piecrusts, and was a symbol of her mastery of the womanly cooking arts. Having it made especially for her greatly increased its value.

My mother cherished the dough bowl

Granny Barton died in 1963. My mother was the last surviving sibling in the Barton family and the cherished dough bowl came to her and eight years ago was passed down to me. It shows its age and there are spots where a fruit display stained the center, but it is an honored vessel. With five daughters it has been hard to me to decide who gets it next. Perhaps it will continue to have a place of honor for the next generation.

Dorothy Gast lives in Romulus, Alabama on the Graham family farm. She taught in Tuscaloosa County Schools for nearly 30 years.
She has a "Mine, yours, and Ours" family. She has volunteered in numerous organizations after her husband's eight year struggle with Alzheimers' ended.
She helped organize a volunteer fire department after she was 60 and served as board secretary and nationally certified firefighter after extensive training.
Her attempts to get the community reading failed, but she contributed books to the new Sipsey Valley high school from the library in her home friends helped her establish.She is known locally by the silhouettes she cuts free hand of children. She began to write nostalgia stories after a grandson asked her to write down the stories often told at family events.

Dorothy Gast lives in Romulus, Alabama on the Graham family farm. She taught in Tuscaloosa County Schools for nearly 30 years.
She has a "Mine, yours, and Ours" family. She has volunteered in numerous organizations after her husband's eight year struggle with Alzheimers' ended.
She helped organize a volunteer fire department after she was 60 and served as board secretary and nationally certified firefighter after extensive training.
Her attempts to get the community reading failed, but she contributed books to the new Sipsey Valley high school from the library in her home friends helped her establish.She is known locally by the silhouettes she cuts free hand of children. She began to write nostalgia stories after a grandson asked her to write down the stories often told at family events.

63 comments

Loved this article! I remember so well my late mother in law making biscuits in a wooden bowl just like this one. One spot in it was so worn that each time I witnessed her making biscuits I thought it would be the last time….that it would break through. My mother actually made biscuits much fluffier and fatter. They were wonderful….never been able to make biscuits like either. Oh, I can make them, but they just are not as good!

My grandmother had a special dough and biscuit making pan. I did not inherit her cooking skills, unfortunately, but that pan is a treasured memory and all the good buttermilk biscuits, dumplings and pie crusts that were mixed in there.

I have my great, great grandmother’s dough bowl. It’s been handed down through the years. It is one of my most cherished possessions. I used to watch my grandmother prepare pie crusts and biscuits from this bowl.

My mother -Clara Glendyn Etheridge and my daddy Sumner Edward Twilley were married in the back seat of a rumble car in the yard of Wesley Chapel in Magnolia, Alabama. I think it was in Magnolia or Arlington Alabama! Could this be the same Wesley Chapel do you think?

my grandfather made my grandmother one when they got married. I do not know what year that was, however she used it until she was no longer able to cook. YEARS later I was reading history about the native american indians (cherokee), there was a picture of a wooden bread making bowl. It seems these were used by the cherokee’s many many moons ago.

We are excited here at AP. Our latest volume in our popular Alabama Footprints series has been released.

The eighth edition, BANISHED, documents The Indian Removal Act called for the “voluntary or forcible removal of all Indians” residing in the eastern United States to the west of the Mississippi River. Between 1831 and 1837, approximately 46,000 Native Americans were forced to leave their homes in southeastern states. Available in paperback and ebook at this link

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